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In the morning we woke up at fairly standard times and just had raisin bread, baked by Ash’s Oma. we spent the morning freshening up and catching up on the internet while ash went to work. When she got back we had lunch and then headed into Vancouver city on the SkyTrain for some touristy activity.

First we stopped at the place most of the Olympic stuff was happening to and wandered down a street towards a couple of rock shops ash knew. It was there we found Dank.

This is a energy drink that has weed in it.

Yeah…

Anyway I had some of that and then we moved on to a few other shops before heading towards the waterfront area to see the Olympic cauldron and for me to be photographed in my G3 shirt.

We wandered around there a bit before carrying on to Gastown, an older part of Vancouver with lots of smaller shops - and a lot of touristy ones - to the Old Spaghetti Factory, where we had a lovely meal, of well, sketti. Then we headed back and sat around and chatted until we were falling asleep.

Ash dropped us off at Chapters [big book shop] at about 10am and we browsed the huge sci-fi/ fantasy section. By 12 we were paying for our purchases [over $200… eeps!]. we briefly walked around outside before going back to the Starbucks and then stayed, drinking coffee and smoothies until Ash came to pick us up again at 3pm… After we got home and played with Minime and our laptops until Beccasaurus showed up for dinner. The rest of the day was spent chatting and having a good time.

So andy just managed to knock over the cd tower by our bed and the ornaments on top, and consiquently break one of them. It was a solid glass globe my aunt and uncle gave me, with brass screws to hold it so it turned on it’s axis. Now, it wasn’t really his fault. He was tired and not thinking right. It was an accident, but one that could have been prevented. And that makes me sad. My glass world is missing part of both poles and no longer fits properly in it’s stand. Also there are glass fragments embedded in the carpet and it’s too late to get the hoover out…

Avery Rackell, deceased, was in a high ranking management position, within the corporatocracy of MOW. He married a co-worker, Tayla Sarez, and had two children, Brianna and Asuka, both daughters, with her. When the children were 5 and 1 Tayla’s parent’s decreed their three children, spouses and various grandchildren should all become freelancers and join the Organisation, an anti-MOW ‘criminal’ organisation. Avery declined the move and tried to convince his wife to do the same. However loyalty to her family overcame loyalty to him and she tried to take both the children with her. In the end Tayla only partly succeeded and left with Brianna, the older of the girls, leaving Asuka in her father’s care.

Asuka was brought up by a wet nurse and a nanny until the age of 8 when her father attained the position he held until his death, and they moved from Devocha, Mars, to London, Earth. She had no knowledge of having a mother or sister until a series of events when she was 25 and she returned to Devocha after her Father’s death a year previous to collect on her inheritance. It was at this time her lawyer revealed their existence, at the late Avery’s request, and the existence of an apartment in New York she was previously unaware of. In the apartment she found a message from her father…

why would he have kept this a secret for so long, and why would he not tell her outright in the message what occurred? Did Avery kill Tayla, either by mistake or design? he would be capable of such an act in the heat of passion. Was he embarrassed at Tayla’s lack of loyalty to him, or her apparent philosophies? In the message Avery points Asuka towards MOW’s archives for explanations, is he afraid someone other than her will find the info and use it against her? Or could he have hidden the truth someplace else if this was the case. Where in the hell does Jarett Tepper, the father of Gurn her business partner, who is apparently a MOW deep cover operative, fit in to this, and how does he know her parents?

As I mentioned before, nano is now over (boo ) but this does mean I finally have time for a bunch of other exciting projects. Namely G3show! Yes, our radio show is still going and not only that, it’s thriving. We’ve gone from roughly 5-10 wishy-washy listeners to about 20 regulars, most of whom I can recall their names. Now this might not sound like a lot, but it means a great deal to us. As well as our listener base going up, we have a more perminent home for the show curtosy of my brother. A little while ago Lorcian and Crace moved out of the North Rd flat and into a really nice flat along Mount Pleasnt rd, that has the advantage of being huge, and with The Rat’s help build a spanking new studio with chairs and everything (the g3 show, now with less back pain!). I think we’re all really pleased whith how well it’s taken off, esspecially in such a short time (come febuary we’ll have been going a year). We’ve made stickers and christmas cards, had people make us sweepers. We have web presence in every major way (website, facebook, twitter), and just recently installed webcams in the studio. So what’s next? Well t-shirts are defiantly in the pipeline. More vauge ideas include having some sort of presence at Bar Camp Bournemouth, some kind of g3 lan party or other convention, acutioning off the proof version of the christmas card, with the proceeds going to TGR and maybe a cafepress store, again with profits going to TGR.

And so to christmas.

So I started a post before christmas trying to look back at the year, but it sort of fell apart so instead I’m going to copy everyone else and do a new years post instead, looking back and forward at the same time.

So hi-lights of 2009 for me?
MLing nanowrimo
One year aniversary of being married

And what am I looking forward too this year?
* going to vancover to see ash and having her come for a visit.
* massive family holiday

What are my goals for next year:
Learn violin japanise and sushi making
Be more comunity involved
Loose weight
Finish the mow files and get a proof copy of it made

Don’t panic, I’m not pregnant.

There’s a lot of talk going on over at Spacefem atm about getting married, growing up and having kids and houses etc. Lately I’ve also been feeling a little… I don’t know, broody I guess. Every time I come on, the hormones kick in and I start thinking about kids and growing up and becoming a Responsible Adult.

A while back I had a bit of a scare. I was throwing up almost every morning, and my period was late. Turned out period was late due to stress and throwing up was due to the fact I wasn’t taking my antihistamines but my diet was still full of shite.

It made me realise that, at the time at least, if there had been some sort of accident I would have been fine with bringing a kid into the world. Maybe that’s what set me off, I don’t know. Anyway the past month Lady S revealed that she was preggers and that set off a huge forum thread about babies and one of the things that were said was [by several people who have kids] was ‘if you just got married, FFS give yourselves a few years to be a couple before you have kids’.

A while back [when Andy was still with sonic IQ] Andy and I sort of had a talk about babies which kinda went:
Me, I think we should have a baby. Or at least come off contraception and see what happens.
Andy, no I don’t think we’re ready.
me, but we have a house, stable incomes. I think I’d be okay having a kid.
Andy, Uh. I don’t think we’re ready.
Me, *huff* okay then.

And then the other day we had another one, which went the opposite.
Andy: I’ve been thinking. Maybe we are ready to have a kid. if you want.
Me: Actually, I’ve been thinking too and [person on spacefem] said ‘if you just got married, FFS give yourselves a few years to be a couple before you have kids’ so maybe we should. We’ve only been married a year or so.
Andy: Ah. Okay then.
Me: You know this is a very adult conversation to be having in the toilet.
Andy: *smirk*

I guess this is his way of telling me he’s ready too

[I don’t know why I’m posting this, it just seemed like an important thing to be noted]

Once again, this November, I have won National Novel Writing Month for the fourth time running. It surprises me every year how different I feel on completion, and validating - to see the words ‘congratulations novelist, you’ve won’. Feeling have ranged from relief at the end long hard slog, ecstasy at completing something so hard.

This year, I have quiet satisfaction at a job well done. I don’t think this is just about my novel though. As ML I’ve been witness to the countless struggles of the writers under my care, and even those that aren’t. I am so very proud of all my wrimo’s, and their efforts. I would like to think I have been a positive influence on them and somehow my being here has helped them out.

And I’m so pumped about doing it again next year

Since starting my nano novel this month I’ve changed my mind a couple of times what I’m writing, but even so I’m please I’ve got stuff down for those other ideas. at the moment however I’m finishing off the MOW files. as such, I’ve spent a great deal of time procrastinating researching topics as diverse as poker rules and ‘the tree of life’.

I’ve also created two book covers for The MOW Files. I think I like the second one better but I thought I’d just stick these up for people to have a look at. All images are courtesy of Getty Images.

The MOW Files, cover 1
The MOW Files, cover 2

Let me know what you think

I’m really stuggling atm with my Nano project. As I’ve mentioned I changed my plans and was trying to write a non-fiction book: housework for enginers. Well it’s going slowly, so very slowly. In two days it’s gotten to 2200 words. The main thing I think is it’s just boring. Technical documents are supposed to be detailed instructions [read boring], then I’m writing about housework [something I personally don’t like at all] and it add up to something I’m really not interested in writing. Listening to everyone talk about their novels, I feel like the kid who’s being kept in during lunch to finish homework while the other kids go out and play.

So I swapped back to my fiction idea, about the LLP and Cloud Dragons. But… I don’t know what exactly it is, I’m just not really feeling it. I don’t have a clear picture in my mind of the people and things and places I’m trying to write about. all I can see is words on a screen. I don’t know if this is an effect of the non-fic [where I have to be about the words rather than the images]. everything that comes out is just so dry and I feel literately constipated.

The Hat doesn’t help either.

Just made myself a nice background for the G1 [whom I have yet to name…]. With Nano and Christmas coming up, I’m rocking the ‘Don’t panic, it’s gonna be fine’ philosophy.

[Images nabbed rather shamelessly from the internet. Sorry original CC holder, I can’t find you]

I can’t remember if I mentioned this before, but I’m the official Municipal Liaison for Dorset. To this end I’ve organised… stuff, but the best part? I got interviewed today by my local paper It went really well, and I surprised myself by how much I talked about nanoing, everything I do, and myself generally. I also got in a couple of plugs for protagonize.com and the G3 Show. She seemed really impressed by how young I am compared with how much I’ve written and organised. She was also really friendly, which was good because I was so nervous to start with She said hopefully this’ll be in the paper the first week of November, as she’ll get the photographer to meet me at Borders before the kick-off party.

And so to the new idea. Well, not quite such a new idea, but something I’ve been toying with for a while, that both Andy and the interviewer said I should do over the fiction idea. It’s for a non-fiction book called ‘housework for the engineer’, and is going to be a technical style manual for people like Andy who need very detailed instructions on how to do IRL stuff. This does make me a Nano Rebel technically, but Nano has always been for me the time when I sit down to do what I wouldn’t otherwise, and this is a prime example

We’ll see how it goes I guess. And if I can’t stretch it into 50k words, well I’ll just move on to the other one

Well, I just wasn’t feeling the previous idea, so for the past week I had been bouncing between ah shit, and oh hell with it. But I think I have an idea now. I wanted to write about the lesbian land pirates again, cuz they were cool, and I sorta had this idea for a couple of characters and dragons made from cloud, but I couldn’t find a way to string them together. But from a discussion with andy, plotting machine that he is found a way to weave them together, into a sort of fantasy/ steam punky way.

Unfortunately it’s a lot like ‘the last exile’ and one of the final fantasy games… So I’m not sure how I feel about that. But I guess we’ll see.

I had no plot, I had no inspiration, both my muses are on holiday. I was worried I would have nothing to write about come November. But then someone in the nano forums pointed me towards this generator and I’m saved!

My title will be The Aeromancers. The synopsis: In a coal powered Victorian Britain a young milquetoast office drone stumbles across a exiled angel which spurs him into conflict with a megalomaniac dictator, with the help of a cherubic girl with pigtails and spunk and her welding gear, culminating in a philosophical discussion punctuated by violence.

What could be simpler!

This is a short short story, inspired by the keyword ‘camel’.

Sammy stopped and gripped the bars of the animal enclosure.

“Wow Dad! What’s that?”

Sam’s dad sighed and looked at the sign on the pen.

“A camel. Oh Gloria!” he said tiredly, attention switching back to Sammy’s little sister. “No, don’t take of your shoes, I said… Look come here…” But Sammy had stopped listening to his dad and was staring intently at the strange creature in front of him. It sorta looked like a funny horse, but was massive, taller than even his dad, and had pale yellow hair all over. Strangest of all where the two lumps on it’s back. Just then it opened it’s thick lipped mouth at him and made a sound sort of like a honk, and sort of like a bark.

“Wow dad, did you-” Sammy aid turning, but his dad was occupied with his little sister still. They had moved over to a bench, and his dad was sat with the push chair in front of him. Sammy huffed to himself; Gloria was always distracting their dad.

“I really like camels,” came a voice to his side. Sammy looked up to see an man, older than his dad, but younger than his Grandpa stood next to him with an ice cream. “Fantastic creatures, aren’t they?” the man continued. “One saved my life once.” Sammy started at the man. His face was heavily tanned and lined, but his voice was that of an American.

“Wow, really?”

“Yup.” The man licked his ice cream.

“Uh, mister?” Sammy said after a moment.

“Yeah?”

“What’re the lumps on it’s back for? Is it sick?” The man laughed and smiled.

“It’s not sick,” he said with his husky voice. “They’re so it can travel for weeks across the desert without dying.

“Wow,” said Sammy, looking again at the camel. “That’s so cool!”

“Yup.”

“Sammy!” his dad suddenly called. “Come on, we’re going now.” Sammy glanced up at the man.

“That your Dad?” the man asked. Sammy nodded. “Don’t keep him waiting then.”

“Thanks mister!” Sammy said, running over to his dad, hand waving.

“Sure thing kid,” said Indy, waving back.

Well, my last proper post was apparently pre-IKEA, over a month ago now. I have been very, very busy since then, hence lack of postage. So far mine and Andy’s evenings look like this:

Monday – radio
Tuesday – nothing
Wednesday - is sometimes taken up by either BUNIX or DLUG
Thursday – Role-play
Friday – Role-play
Saturday – Role-play [sometimes]
Sunday – sometimes have dinner at my parents

To say nothing of the days. I do get 3 days off a week now, but they always seem to be spent doing chores. Every since we got the IKEA Shelves the house has been truly a mess, and I’ve managed to do piecemeal amounts of tidying, but finally on Thursday I got it all sorted. I even managed to make the spare room presentable.

Work has been pretty hectic as well; Promo, promo, sale, promo, sale. We’ve just put another sale live, and we have an audit starting Monday.

I’ve also got a new phone – the HTC Dream, AKA T-Mobile G1, that I’m loving to bits. In fact all those pics I’ve linked to up there were taken with the phone, sent to the web using PixlePipe, and then, in the last one’s case at least, forwarded to photobucket. It is making life so much easier, though in some cases it means I blog less, because I use Pixlepipe to post to Twitter and Jaiku micro-blog sites.

Humm, what else have I been doing?

For the past week or so I’ve been ill – cough that turned into a chest infection – and I lost my voice, making work even harder than it had to be [oh and now Andy’s caught it, poor thing].

As a result of that, I’ve been trying to get healthy again [it kind of dropped off over the past month because we were so busy]. I’ve gone back to eating things that are passably good for me, and I’ve decided it’s easier to be healthy the rest of the week, and be unhealthy only on Thursday during role-play. So my average day now consists of:

Breakfast:
1 portion of fruit, 1 cereal bar, tea or coffee 1 sugar

Mid morning:
tea or squash, 1 cereal bar

Lunch:
3 portions of fruit [1 actual item of fruit, 250ml of Innocent smoothie], Sushi, 2 drinks [either tea or squash], 50g of cashew nuts when I’m really hungry

Mid afternoon:
tea or squash, 1 cereal bar

Dinner
Nothing set, but mostly things like stew, spag bog, stir fry etc

I don’t know, but I would like to think this is fairly healthy.

I haven’t really taken up any new past-times, or even gone much back into old ones, but I am writing a lot more on Protagonize. So my ‘thing a month’ has kind of gone out the window, and I would aim to take it up again, but I have a hell od a lot of holidays coming up.

July 10-13 I’m going to a medival re-enacters fair, July 20-26 up to Yorkshire to see Bytey, August 13-16 is Fairport’s Cropready Convention, October23-25 is LUG Radio Live and finally March 1-7 2010 is Daytona Bike week in Florida.

So I’m pretty certain that’s all I’ve been up to lately [and will be upto], and if you read through all that you’re a star

http://www.boingboing.net/2009/05/29/usa-canada-and-the-e.html

The jist of this is that a bunch of rich countries are trying to stop the blind and linguisticly disabled from being able to have access to books and the written word through copyright legalise. I say this is just about the wrongest and most retarded thing I’ve ever heard of and it needs to be stopped.

Please, if you give any kind of damn about a fellow human, pass the word on and tell these asshole publishes to fuck the hell off!

I love Ikea, don’t get me wrong. I think the whole premiss behind it is fantastic, and I love going and wandering around the show rooms and imagining the vast possibilities and How I Can Make Them Work For Me™.

Now, Dark and I have needed a media storage solution for… well, since we moved out of home 3 years ago. Between us we’ve got over 600 books, 200 music CDs, probably about the same for DVDs and console games, and too many media CDs to count. Back last summer we contacted a guy to make us a bespoke media solution, but that hasn’t panned out so we decided, in our apparent naivety, that we’d use an Ikea solution.

Oh dear gods was that a mistake. I have spent the better part of today, armed with pencil, ruler and graph paper trying to make us a solution. My head is numb from the sheer mind blowing number of possible combinations that we can fit on the one wall I was concentrating. Please remember this isn’t counting the rest of the room. I feel like gibbering in a corner somewhere.

But you know what the best part is? I’m not finished!!!! So I get to do this all over again tomorrow!!!!

Oh, and my ruler isn’t straight.

Guh *headdesk*

Yay, I’ve finally finished committing all the edits I made to the MOW files Novel. There are two particularly difficult scenes I’ve got left to re-work, and, uh, most of the end to rewrite, but hopefully I’ll have all that done soon so I can submit it to createspace and get a free paperback proof copy of the novel. It’s just marginally unfortunate I don’t feel especially inspired to do them right now… Ah well, procrastination and perseverance will win the day.

In other news! I’ve been getting back into the Redwall books, they’re fantastic. Makes me more than ever want to try my hand again with Andy. We’re also edging closer to getting our thankyou’s sent out, and our media system sorted. We’ve decided to send a bunch of signed photos and have a play with some stuff from Ikea.

Hopefully as well, along with all that I’ll take a look at some GMing stuff online with a view to running that long promised RPG. Still haven’t decided if I want to set it in Stone of Tides or space.

Oh and in other, other news I should be finding out in three days if I’ve got my NVQ

Well, I noticed it’s been over a month since I last posted. Frankly though things haven’t really changed that much in terms of what’s going on in my life. If anything things have gotten a little worse, in that it’s been over a week since I last did any exercise on the wii fit and the diet-ness has taken a long walk off a short pier Motivation and organisation at still major suckage, but at least I’ve only got one more case study to do before my folder is sent off to be verified that I’ve finished my apprenticeship. The radio show is still fine, except that someone forgot to pay the domain bills for GRN, so our site now advertises a bunch of crap.

In other news, Kelly’s wedding was nice. On the way back from it Owen, Sarah and and I went to Ikea to look at their custom furniture storage solutions. I find Ikea unduly exciting, and walking around imagining having all our media finally sorted and stored accessibly and appropriately was thrilling. I get excited at the weirdest things… Of course though, that and the sudden surge of money I suddenly realised I have, I went out and bought more books, DVDs and CDs.

I’ve picked back up on the MOW files novel. I found out that I only have until the end of may to finish my edits and submit it to CreateSpace for a free proof copy of my novel. I’m about halfway through the edits that I already set out, but only just starting on the re-write of the end section. I don’t know whether I’ll finish on time, but with the NVQ out of the way it’ll probably make things easier. Oh and talking of writing, I’ve recently gone back to Protagonise. Andy and I published The Stone of Tides, no one has commented on it yet, or given any thoughts as to how we end the thing, but I know people are reading it, and I appreciate it’s very long [I got to 50k words, and Andy got to 25k, so that’s about 75,000 words and it’s not finished].

And then with both NVQ done, and hopefully the MOW novel out of the way I can maybe get back to my thing a month promises. In June, perhaps I will try and and run that Stone of Tides campaign I was thinking of, or some kind of space adventure [we haven’t done anything futuristic in a while]

So of got lots of stuff I’d like to do, and plenty to keep me busy. The only thing that concerns me slightly lately is, when I got made supervisor [properly now, with the correct pay and all], Jenny the Assit. Manager, asked me if I had any goals or thoughs as to where I might be in a year or five, and I honestly couldn’t think of any. I mean, yes I still kinda want to run my own business, but lets be realistic here - it’s kind of a pipe dream. What’s bugging me is that I have no real drive or ambition to do anything more with my life. I never wanted to be one of those people who reached a point they were comfortable with and then just stopped. I always wanted to be someone special or important, and well, that one didn’t really work out, but either way it looks a lot like I have just reached a point and stopped and I hate myself for being like that. I don’t want to just sit still now, but I have no idea how to carry on moving forward and bettering myself, or my lot, especially considering how old I ma now - I kinda feel like most of life has just passed me buy. In that regard at least, everything sucks and I’m confused and annoyed.

Oh well, I guess that’s extra drivel for another day’s rant.

The other day, as Dark and I were walking to work, he spotted a sign in game station for a reconditioned Wii and a new Wii Fit all for £175. I ummed and ahhed about it for the week, because I thought it might be a smart idea to get Dark and I excersing more [I’d already decided to change my diet], and last staurday went and bought the damn thing.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m enjoying using it, I think it’s going to do Dark and I the world of good. BUT good god damn, do I hurt. Like the man said it’s making us both realise how unfit we’ve gotten. The things I’ve been doing most are the yoga stretches, some of the muscle workouts and the jogging, and it’s showing: my calves and side muscles ache like crazy, and every cough is painfully brought home to me. But I think the pain is good for two reasons. First, all this exercise must be working or it wouldn’t hurt so much… right? Second is that it’s made me notice how often I cough. This was also brought home to me on monday night, when one of our regular listeners informed me that I have been this bad for three weeks, no simple cold should last that long and he ordered me to the doctors…

Which leads me to the next part of my health ramble… I’m gonna try really hard to cut out all the bad shit I’ve been eating lately - no ice cream, chocolate, bread, cheese, eggs or take out for me any more. I’m also going to moderate my soda drinking, and replace with Innocent Smoothies. So that means getting up early every morning to do half an hour on the Wii, and getting in early for work so I can buy a sushi pack on the way in. Still not sure what I’m gonna do about breakfast because I’m not convinced that I should be using LactoFree milk every morning. I think a yoghurt pot is okay maybe a few days, with a cereal bar and some fruit, but that doesn’t completely fix the issue. Maybe I’ll see if I can still get an appointment with the dietician and see what they can recommend.

I think that’s all my heath related news for now. In the rest of my life: Work is stress, novel editing has stalled, almost finished NVQ, house is a tip - might be getting a maid, social life a disorganised mess, G3 radio show beginning to be a success, thing-a-month for April probably not gonna happen.

There are never enough hours in the day and I have 0 motivation most of the time, but I think it’s directly related to my crappy diet, so the sooner I get that fixed the better.

Argh, I have blank page syndrome. I was going to tell all about Dark and my little holiday last weekend, how I feel tired all that time and it sucks and I half hate mu job and how NaNoEdMo is kinda going alrightish - I wont win, but at least I might still get something spiffy out of it. But I find I have not much else so say beyond that. Every attempt at something slightly more detailed sounds silly to my mind. I guess that might do - I just thought since I hadn’t written in a while and update might be in order, and I suppose since that all that’s really going on in my life right now, it shall suffice.

I’m 6 days in, and I haven’t touched my manuscript. That means I have 12 hours of editing to make up. Eep..

I though I’d take a look back at what my goals where and see how I’d got on.

January’s goal was to have made one vidcast and published it. This hasn’t exactly happened, but the G³ show has been doing very well. Last week we reached almost 30 unique listeners, we have a name, an intro, an e-mail address [g3show[at]gamingradio.com] and we should soon have a website. And one of our listeners made us this:

Thanks Blobbin!
I chalk this one up as an off kilter WIN.

February’s goal was to take 5 lessons on the violin. Well February was a little rushed for me, so I swapped that out to make book marks instead, and… I used about 50 pages, rather than the full 100, and I haven’t cut them all out so I think that’s looking like a fail.

March is supposed to be NaNoEdMo: 50 hours of editing time for The MOW Files. It’s 6 days in, and I haven’t touched it. Though I have had a bunch of other Homework for my NVQ to do, so… We’ll see how this one goes.

In other news, by external even was a success: we took more more money than any one else in our area, and they were also more successful than any previous external sales our store has run.